The ability to build forms that are interactive and intuitive is highly beneficial for the end users. Have you ever built a form and wanted to tweak the way the answers will show up? For instance, you might want to set the font size, font color, and more. In today’s post, we’ll talk about how to set up your form so that the responses look nice and organized.
To access the properties and edit them, either double click on the form field box while in editing mode, or simply right click. Below is a list of the properties that you are able to change.
Appearance:
Borders and colors
The box surrounding the text can be colored if you’d like; this is completely up to you. If you decide to go with a border, you can select the thickness of the line and its style as well.
Text:
You can change the default size, color, and font of the responses.
Options:
Alignment: Left, Right, Centre
Assign a default value
This is useful if there is an answer that you think is common or a prompt that you want to give users.
How the response displays in the text boxes:
-Scroll long text: The text you input will continue on one line
Multi-line: If you enter a long answer (eg. Paragraph), the text will break into multiple lines and fill the length of the box. However, you will not be able to scroll through the answer.
If you have a lot of text, you can select both “Scroll long text” and “multi-line” so that you can scroll through the multiple lines that are hidden from view.
Limit of x amount of characters
Choose this option if you don’t want the answers to be too long; however, it will not be specified on the form.
Actions
You can refer back to an old blog post we wrote on the topic of mouse triggers to learn more.
Format
If applicable, you can set it so that the values that the user enters are numbers, percentages, dates, or times. There is also an option to select special formats: Zip Code, Phone Number, Social Security Number, and Arbitrary Mask. It’s important to note that you can’t select “Special” if you have “Multi-line” checked.
Calculations
You can also learn more about this topic in a previous post.
Pro-tip: Always remember to press “Close” to save!
There you have it! This is how you set up form responses in PDFelement for Mac. The functions in the Windows version of the software are similar, so if you have any questions or tutorial requests, let us know in the comments below!
We also have an online forum where you can get your PDFelement questions answered. Hope to see you there!